Promotion

The Crazies remake moves studio

There's two images that remain in my head from The Crazies. One is of the Army walking aroung the town wearing the white suits and gas masks shooting everyone, and the other is the woman with the knitting needles, a great scene.

Finally, after over two years of talking, it looks like a remake of George A. Romero's The Crazies is going ahead. Oh, and we knew back in February that Breck Eisner was directing, keep up.

The Crazies is a film with a brilliant premise and some great sequences and ideas, but it's dated, as the trailer for the original below found through Quiet Earth shows us.

Then in February of this year I wrote that Ray Wright had been taken on to write the new script, he rewrote Pulse and wrote the upcoming Case 39 and despite the possibility of Brad Anderson directing the remake, no director was attached.

However he's been attached for a while, but the film has been going nowhere. Now Variety tells us that Overture Films are taking over the production from Rogue Pictures, and with the same film-makers as already mentioned. What's interesting about the announcement is that it looks like they won't be going for straight horror fare. The CEO of Rogue Pictures, Chris McGurk, said of the company's move to horror:

"We've been trying to move into horror fare that is clever and smart"

So you could assume that they are trying to do something clever with The Crazies, when the easiest and most tempting part of it is to go for the horror.

I hope they do hold out for the more intelligent factor and we get something that had the impact of watching the original. There are a few good moments in the film where you get a shock from the sheer folly of chance and human nature, and I really can't tell you what they are for fear of spoiling the film in case they're in the new script.

I'm going to come off my remake soapbox and say that this is a good choice for a remake, and will really appeal to audiences today, as long as they don't go for straight horror.